With a midnight deadline bearing down on Colorado lawmakers, the controversial teacher-reform bill passed second reading, with eight Democrats crossing party lines to vote for Senate Bill 191.

More than 33 lawmakers rose in support of the bill at about 11:15 p.m., allowing its return to the House for third reading today, when a roll-call vote will be taken.

The House needed to pass the bill by midnight to conform to a state constitutional requirement that no bill receive second and third reading on the same day. Today is the last day of the 2010 session.

Bill co-sponsor Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon, said the vote marked a big hurdle crossed and said she thought today’s third- reading vote will be fine.

But the bill’s fate is not yet sealed. It will return to the Senate after its third reading, where lawmakers must decide whether the amendments made by the House are acceptable.

More than 200 amendments to the bill have been considered since it was introduced April 12 by Sen. Michael Johnston.

“Then we have to see where the Senate is at,” Scanlan said. “It went well, considering the level of emotion in the room.”

Earlier in the evening a group of former teachers turned lawmakers led a filibuster in an attempt to run the clock on SB 191 — which would have killed the legislation.

But the delay lasted only 90 minutes, ending at about 6:40 p.m., when consensus was reached on an amendment that would allow teachers to appeal demotions.

After that issue was resolved, Democratic lawmakers began to debate Senate Bill 191 and add amendments — pushing toward the midnight deadline.

Scanlan said the the filibuster attempt and the slow move to vote on the bill were power plays by Democrats toeing the party line. “It was to show that if they wanted to go there, they could have,” she said.

Republicans, who are lock step in support of the bill, said if Democrats killed the bill without a vote, they would have done the same to every piece of legislation seeking their support today — forcing a legislative meltdown, said House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker.

SB 191 seeks to change the way teachers obtain and keep tenure and ties teacher evaluations to student academic growth. Teachers who receive two consecutive “ineffective” ratings could lose their tenured status and, potentially, their jobs.

Proponents say the bill would help identify effective teaching, make it easier to remove bad teachers and put the state in top position to win $175 million in federal Race to the Top grants.

The bill passed the Senate two weeks ago, and Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter has said he will sign the legislation into law.

But teachers have been vehemently opposed to the bill, saying it relies too much on tests, that it scapegoats teachers and takes away due process afforded nonprobationary teachers.

The 40,000-member Colorado Education Association has been fighting the bill every step of the way, saying the legislature shouldn’t be involved in deciding who is an effective teacher.

Union officials and opponents of the bill have been arguing the matter should be left to the governor’s Council on Educator Effectiveness that was created earlier this year.

The CEA had asked for binding arbitration when a teacher gets a second “ineffective” rating.

That amendment was made in the House Education committee five days ago, but didn’t have the support of Johnston, D-Denver, the bill’s originator.

That was the point that led to the filibuster attempt.

After brief debate, House lawmakers approved a change that would require Gov. Ritter’s Council on Educator Effectiveness by 2013 to come up with a permanent appeals process for teachers facing their second consecutive “ineffective” rating. Lawmakers would have to give the process final approval.

“It allows us a little more thoughtful appeals process than we can come up with here on the fly,” said bill co-sponsor Rep. Christine Scanlan, D-Dillon.

CEA Executive Director Tony Salazar said the union still was not prepared to change its position on the bill to “neutral.” But he said his organization would consider all of the amendments and come up with a determination this morning.

The union has long argued that the governor’s council has been cut out of the process of developing teacher effectiveness standards.

“Ideally, this whole process would have been given to the council,” Salazar said.

When the Senate got wind Tuesday afternoon that SB 191 might be in trouble, supporters in both parties deliberately slowed their pace. They talked longer on bills, made more trips to the microphone.

When word came that the bill was coming up for debate, things got back to normal in the Senate, said Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, who was instrumental in the slowdown.

“Nobody wanted a legislative blood bath, but we’re going to play our cards,” he said.

Some Democrats played along, Penry said, because they didn’t want to see Johnston’s bill die.

Nevertheless, after the Senate adjourned for the evening, Johnston hung around, sticking his head in and out of the third floor House gallery.

Shortly after 10 p.m., Associate Education Commissioner Richard Wenning told Johnston to get back into the gallery, that there was a crisis.

Rep. Max Tyler, D-Lakewood, had offered an amendment that Scanlan said she could support: Teachers would not be evaluated on the performance of students who missed more than 10 days of school.

“This is bad,” Johnston said, worried that teachers would try to force kids out of school.

His aide got word to Scanlan, who then said she didn’t support the measure.

Tyler said teachers must handle all types of kids who walk in the door, regardless of their condition coming in. “If you were running a business baking bread and the flour came in to you full of maggots and worms, you would not be able to produce a good product, would you?”

“He just called disadvantaged kids maggots?” Johnston asked in shock. “This is unbelievable.”

Tyler said he was trying to point out that a school can’t be run like a business because a business can choose its own products while public schools have to accept everyone.

He said using maggot-infested flour was a poor analogy and he regretted saying it.

After the vote, Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, gave a quiet and halting soliloquy, explaining her party’s resistance to the bill.

“I am so sad at the division this bill has caused our state and our legislature,” she said. “It’s important that you know that 40,000 teachers had their voices spoken tonight. What you heard from people who voiced their opinions tonight is from our guts and our hearts.

“The message we have sent tonight is not one of love and encouragement,” she said.

Senate Bill 191

Intent: Ties teacher evaluations to student academic growth; tenured teachers found “ineffective” for two consecutive years would lose job protections.

Sticking point: State teachers union wanted an appeals process; an amendment was added in the House Education Committee but not backed by Republicans or the bill’s originator, Sen. Michael Johnston.

Compromise: House lawmakers approved an amendment that would require the Council on Educator Effectiveness by 2013 to come up with a permanent appeals process.

What’s next: Having passed on an initial vote Tuesday, if the bill a passes a final, recorded vote today, the measure will return to the Senate to be rejected as amended, accepted as amended and then moved on to the governor for his signature, or referred to a conference committee where differences would require approval in the Senate and House before the legislature adjourns today.

Jeremy P. Meyer was a reporter and editorial writer with The Denver Post until 2016. He worked at a variety of weeklies in Washington state before going to the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin as sports writer and then copy editor. He moved to the Yakima Herald-Republic as a feature writer, then to The Gazette in Colorado Springs as news reporter before landing at The Post. He covered Aurora, the environment, K-12 education, Denver city hall and eventually moved to the editorial page as a writer and columnist.

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